


one step closer

by McEnchilada



Category: Father Brown (2013)
Genre: Arguing, Coming Out, Emotional Baggage, First Kiss, Hot Chocolate, Late Night Conversations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-07 20:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15226911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McEnchilada/pseuds/McEnchilada
Summary: As promised, Flambeau returns Father Brown's umbrella.set after s3e10, "The Judgement of Man"





	one step closer

“Your umbrella.”

Father Brown looked down at the serviceable black umbrella being offered to him, then up at the thief offering it. Flambeau smiled faintly. Father Brown beamed.

“Ah. Thank you.” It was presented to him handle first, the same way one would hand over a significantly more formidable weapon, with the kind of flourish one would expect from Flambeau. Brown took it, and took a step back from the doorway. “Do come in. Would you like a drink?”

“Thank _you_ ,” Flambeau answered courteously, stepping inside and doffing his Homburg. He hung it on a peg by the door, beside Brown’s wide-brimmed black hat. After he'd closed the door, still smiling beatifically, Brown took his hat down in order to hook the worn bamboo handle onto the peg, and then place the hat back over it. Flambeau had never spent time in the presbytery, except when he'd stopped in briefly for the rosary, but nonetheless, looking at the neat arrangement, he could sense that a very small part of the world had been set right.

Umbrella restored to its rightful place, Father Brown led the way into his study. It was a cozy little room with a view of the garden--probably a pleasant prospect, but too dark to see now--and bookcases full to bursting. There were the expected religious tomes, of course, but Flambeau was amused to see that those were outnumbered by an enviable collection of detective novels. He'd begun to suspect that it wasn't only when he was around that Father Brown caused headaches for the local constabulary.

“Sherry?” Brown asked, already dispensing a glass from a decanter on the desk. At Flambeau’s nod, he handed it over, and poured himself another. He sat down behind his desk, inviting Flambeau to take the armchair by the window with a wave, but Flambeau chose to remain standing as he sipped his sherry.

“Rather late for a visit, isn't it?”

Flambeau raised an eyebrow. “I didn't wake you, I hope?” he said, knowing that he hadn't. The priest still had his collar on, and Flambeau didn't think that even the saintly Father Brown would choose to sleep in it.

“Oh, no, I was just reading. Agatha Christie’s latest.” Sure enough, _After the Funeral_ was propped open on the table beside the armchair, only just begun. “There's just been a second death. Poirot's being called on,” relayed Brown, with a gleam in his eye. Flambeau had little interest in detective stories himself, but he had to fight a surge of something warm at the boyish enthusiasm in Brown’s expression.

“I’d have thought you’d had enough excitement this week,” he said archly. It had only been two days, after all, since the business at the Belvedere, and while it hadn't ended in gunfire as their previous escapades had, it had gotten tense, towards the end.

Brown shrugged bashfully in reply, and Flambeau regretted saying anything. When everything you said was in the same offhand tone, friendly teasing was often confused for criticism, which Flambeau had by no means intended. Now he could hardly correct for it by telling Brown that he found his enthusiasm endearing.

“I didn't have a chance to ask,” Brown said a moment later, perking up again, “how did things go with Rebecca?”

How had things gone? He'd dismissed his henchman, found a hotel, and gotten blind drunk, was how. The bellboy had needed to help him from the bar to his room, and then Flambeau had tipped him ten pounds to bring him another bottle of scotch. All of yesterday had been spent convalescing, and ricocheting wildly between misery, indignation, and a spate of joyous tears brought on just by the knowledge that she was alive after so long. Compounded with his failure at the museum--being outwitted, _again_ , by a parish pastor--and it had altogether been the most humiliating forty-eight hours he'd suffered since he'd once locked himself in a bank vault for a weekend.

“Quite well,” he told Brown. Brown smiled benevolently, until Flambeau went on: “She went her way, and I went mine. As I told you, I have no interest in love.”

He raised his glass to his lips, wishing he had a cigarette instead. Nothing said “insouciant” like a cigarette.

Brown frowned and stood up, coming around the desk with his hands behind his back. Flambeau pretended to occupy himself reading the titles of his Rex Stout novels, feeling the same thrill he'd gotten as a boy talking back to the schoolmaster. _Shows you_.

“I can't believe,” said Father Brown sternly, “that you care so little for her. I don't believe it.” His tone was firm and disapproving, but with that damnable current of kindness of his lurking underneath like a crocodile. “I saw how you reacted to seeing her there. Don't expect me to believe that you didn't feel anything, seeing her leave.”

It had felt like a knife in his chest. It had felt like being in Leipzig again, watching her being dragged away. It had felt like he'd let her die, all over again.

“Well, perhaps I did. Happily, I've made a full recovery.”

Father Brown huffed a short, frustrated sigh. “Why are you so determined not to have feelings?”

“Why are you so determined that I should?” Flambeau countered. A part of him wondered why he was starting this argument again; the same part had questioned his coming here in the first place. How was it he kept managing to get drawn into psychoanalysis by this unassuming, idealistic priest, in his backwoods village that was interesting only incidentally? What was it that had brought him back here? What was it about him that brought out the philosopher in Flambeau, as well as the contrarian? Surely he could find a better way to spend his Friday night than being told, for a thousandth time, that he was an amoral reprobate who had better smarten up or be forever doomed.

And yet, somehow, here he was.

Brown took a moment to assemble his thoughts. His mouth moved while he thought, shaping words selected and then discarded unsaid. Flambeau, a man who thought quickly and acted faster, might not have waited so long to hear anyone else’s argument, assuming that if they couldn't keep pace with him they wouldn't be worth hearing out. He'd learned by now, however, that Brown hid a remarkable cleverness behind his molelike expression and naïve moralizing. Therefore he waited with only mild impatience, and took the time to pour himself a second sherry.

“Love,” said Father Brown, at last settling on what he wanted to say, “isn't something to be feared. It's a gift. And the people we love, and who love us, are sent to help us. They make us better, and happier. God created Eve so that Adam wouldn't be alone, so that they could help each other. By denying yourself love, you're rejecting God, but you're also harming yourself.” Of course the priest could be relied upon to turn the conversation to Flambeau’s immortal soul.

He failed to refrain from scoffing. 

Brown continued, as if he hadn't heard, “You're afraid to let yourself feel love because you think it will make you weak, but love can only make you stronger, if you let it into your heart.”

A pity he'd already wasted a scoff. Flambeau had to settle for a derisive smirk. “Hardly, in my line of work. At best, attachment is a liability I can't afford. At worst, it's a knife in the back. Besides,” he added lightly, gesticulating with his sherry glass, “they always want a bigger cut than I'm willing to give them.”

There was no immediate reply. Brown looked exasperated, if not yet fully annoyed. He turned away to gaze out the window--at his own reflection, at any rate, which didn't dispel however hard he squinted--and the silence stretched. 

Surely an appeal to biblical teachings hadn't been the argument he'd been counting on? He had to have known it wouldn't work on Flambeau. Perhaps he was deciding that Flambeau was a lost cause; he wouldn't be the first member of the clergy to do so, but it would be out of character. No, he was simply tired of arguing with someone who refused to concede to his compassionate rationality. They were stubborn as mules, both of them, and this argument could go on all night.

It might be best for their tentative friendship, or whatever you called it when you each went out of your way to be a nuisance to the other while bantering merrily, if Flambeau made an excuse and left now. The fact that Brown hadn't consigned Flambeau’s soul to whichever circle of hell would have him didn't mean he _wouldn't,_ and the thought that he might be frustrated into doing so was...curiously upsetting.

And so, naturally, he said, “Besides, you're a priest. Don't tell me you can't understand swearing off feelings that will only prove troublesome.”

Brown’s eyes met Flambeau’s in the reflection, and then flicked guiltily away. Flambeau was delighted to see that he was beginning to blush, color creeping up his neck from beneath his dog collar and at the tips of his ears. Human after all, then. What feelings had he buried deep, while lecturing Flambeau on his?

He took a step closer, making no effort to disguise his smugness. “You chose a life of denial. Doesn't mean that you're rejecting a gift from God, too?”

“It's a sacrifice,” said Brown quietly, without turning. “A choice I made in order to serve God.”

“A very lonely choice. You never regret it? You don't wish…”

He shrugged, looking down at his hands. Flambeau watched Brown’s reflection in the window, the furrow in his brow and the pursing of his lips. His face hid very little. Flambeau, whose face was a mask and every gesture a deflection, wondered how he could bear to be so exposed. 

With a shake of his head, Brown answered, “I am just a man.”

 _Not “just” anything_ , Flambeau thought fleetingly. Father Brown’s innate sincerity never failed to disarm him, and more than ever tonight, when the word “redemption” hadn't come up at all. An impassioned speech about God’s forgiveness and the saving of his soul was much easier to disdain than this quiet vulnerability. 

It drove Flambeau to speak, but for once not just to fill the silence he hated. There was something about Brown that made it difficult to maintain the walls that Flambeau had so artfully constructed, an openness that politely demanded the same. No wonder people were so willing to confess all their sins to him; he compelled honesty, and it frightened Flambeau more than he would ever admit.

“I don't reject love because I've given up one variety of it.” Brown’s voice startled Flambeau out of his thoughts. The priest was watching him in the window now, his face guileless and searching. “I have the love of God, and my parish, and my friends. Those are enough for me.”

“Friends like the _lovely_ Lady Felicia?” He knew what he was implying was absurd, but he felt like he was suffocating in this cozy little room with Father Brown’s eyes on him.

Brown turned around, frowning. Flambeau struck out in desperation for air. “She's a beautiful woman. Rich, too. No one would blame you for being tempted.”

“I am not _tempted._ ” He sounded not merely indignant, but offended, likely at the implied slight on his friend’s honor as well as his own. 

Flambeau smirked his incredulity. “Of course. She's only the most beautiful woman in the county. An unhappy marriage, an inattentive husband, an empty house. And you see her practically every day. She's very fond of you, by the way. She told ‘Chip’ that she thinks you're so _kind_ \--”

“Stop it.” It was always a delight to make Brown lose patience with him. It took much longer than it had Father Jourdan, when Flambeau was a boy, and Flambeau hadn't yet seen Brown lose his temper completely. He was confident he could do it, given enough time and theological fallacies. For now, Brown was simply glaring, his lips pressed together tightly and his cheeks flushed with anger. “My feelings towards Lady Felicia are nothing like what you're suggesting, and I won't have you talking about her this way.”

“Oh, come now, Father,” Flambeau taunted, unconsciously shifting his feet wider and straightening his shoulders; a fighting stance, strong and poised, coiled like a spring. Fight-or-flight was a reaction that he always prepared to acquiesce to. “It's only you and me here. You can be honest. What kind of man wouldn't…”

Brown, his mouth open for another denial, suddenly froze. His eyes went wide. The color drained from his face. He recovered himself a moment later, but Flambeau had only needed the space of that skipped heartbeat to come to a new conclusion. He was, after all, French; he was familiar with these things.

“Oh, I see. _That_ kind of man.”

Father Brown pursed his lips and turned on his heel, hurrying out of the room, but he was sorely mistaken if he thought that was all it would take to end so riveting a conversation. Flambeau followed him into the kitchen, insolently perching on the edge of the table and crossing his arms over his chest. Brown seemed resolved to ignore him. With determined focus, he took down a tin from the cupboard, dug out a small saucepan, and fetched a bottle of milk from the refrigerator. Good lord, he was making cocoa. Adorable.

“Well, that clarifies your call to serve,” remarked Flambeau, hiding a grin. He couldn't help it; despite his best efforts, he was fascinated by this dowdy country priest, and this was the most fascinating tidbit of all. It was a relief to have something so very human to latch onto, and a relief to have the topic turned to completely from himself. “After all, you weren't the marrying kind to begin with, were you?”

Brown was standing by the range watching his milk heat--he was making _cocoa_ \--and he gripped the edge of it with both hands when Flambeau spoke behind him. In a strained voice, he said, “I’m not ashamed.”

Brown’s knuckles were white with the force of his grip, his shoulders so tight they nearly reached his ears. His whole body practically vibrated with tension. He wasn't ashamed, but Flambeau thought he might well be afraid.

As sudden as had been the delight Flambeau had felt upon his first realization, he was overcome even more abruptly with an emotion he'd very recently professed himself immune to: guilt. 

Of course Brown would think that Flambeau would be cruel with this information; there was good reason it had been kept secret. At best, speaking to practically anyone, he could expect derision, and at worst… Even if he wished to make use of the institutional deterrents of homosexuality, Flambeau’s criminality would render him unable to access them, but they were nonetheless a threat far too present to be forgotten. And in any case, people didn't need to rely on police or psychologists to be monstrous. Brown had no reason to believe that Flambeau wouldn't be. What cause had he ever given Brown to trust him in anything, especially something as dear as this?

Oh, damn.

Flambeau resisted the urge to to clear his throat nervously. With affected ease, he replied, “Why should you be? I'm certainly not.”

Brown whirled around. His arm knocked into the handle of the pan on the stove, almost hurling milk across the kitchen, but paid it no attention. Behind his spectacles, his eyes were big and very blue. “You? You're…”

He wouldn't avoid Brown’s eyes. He refused. So what if this was the closest he'd come to confession since he was fourteen years old? It didn't count anyway, without a trace of repentance. Sodomy wasn't even the most interesting sin he'd committed, by a long shot, or one he might ever be persuaded to regret. Still, he couldn't deny that he very badly wanted to look away. He had to resolve that, if Father Brown was brave enough to be forthright, the greatest thief in Europe couldn't be less so.

“Attracted to men? Yes, though not exclusively. You should know by now how I like to remain adaptable.”

“Yes.” Brown continued to stare as though seeing Flambeau anew. Since the masculine attraction couldn't be especially scandalizing to him, considering, Flambeau supposed it was because he'd vouchsafed the information so freely. For once, he hadn't even been trying to get a rise out of Brown. Now it appeared that neither of them knew how to go on from here, with their shared secret hanging in the air between them.

Flambeau pushed off from the table and came closer. It had only been a quarter hour since he'd arrived at the presbytery, umbrella in hand, but it seemed that he'd been there for hours. The dark night outside pressed against the windows to remind them of the late hour, and the lateness hinted at the intimacy of the conversation. He might be a thief, but Flambeau preferred to do his work by daylight. Midnight shadows served to hide him, but other things were much harder to conceal when the stars were out.

“So then surely,” he said, more softly than he'd meant to, ending the anticipatory silence in the only way he was comfortable, “surely, you can understand better than most the danger of giving in to indulgences like love.”

Brown looked away at last, fixing his eyes on his clasped hands instead. “There is danger, yes. But I...I believe that it's worth it. If we close our hearts to the ‘dangerous’ kinds of love, we also close them to all the things that make life worth living. We become bitter.” That had to be for Flambeau’s benefit; no one in the world had less bitterness in them than Father Brown. But no pointed look accompanied the remark, to remind him of his failings. “If we lose ourselves in bitterness, it becomes impossible to see the beauty around us. And there is beauty.”

He raised his head to meet Flambeau’s gaze again, his smile creasing the corners of his eyes.

“The world can be cruel. Especially when you've lost someone you loved, it can seem impossible to leave your heart open. It hurts less to shut everyone away. But only when you let yourself love again, in whatever way you can, will the pain begin to heal. If you won't listen to me talking about God, at least listen to me for your own sake. You can be healed, if only you let it happen.”

Sermon delivered, he turned back to his merrily steaming milk on the stove, removing it just in time to stop it from boiling over. He spooned in the cocoa mix and stirred it happily, oblivious to the way Flambeau was watching him.

He looked--he was--so unbearably kind, as gentle as sunlight on a spring morning. Flambeau could barely believe he was human. In the warm yellow light of the kitchen, he almost glowed golden, and sometimes Flambeau didn't think it would surprise him if he saw him sporting angel’s wings. Certainly he'd never met anyone else who'd had the same faith in God, the same blissful contentment, the same wealth of forgiveness.

It was more than Flambeau could bear, that sincerity landing like a blow every time Brown turned that smile on him. But it was intoxicating, too, to meet perhaps the one person in the world who believed he could still be saved, and who believed him worth saving. The last person who'd believed him had been Rebecca, a lifetime ago. Even then, there had been a thousand lies he'd hidden from her, convinced that he could become a different man for her sake. Rebecca had looked at him with eyes blinded by love; Brown looked at him like he could be loved in spite of all he was.

It was intoxicating, and addicting, too. Love was an indulgence, he'd said, and like many others it would be so easy to give in to it completely. Too easy, to get drunk off those understanding, unwavering smiles. Impossibly easy, to let himself love and be loved the way the priest insisted he ought to.

Did Flambeau imagine it, or did his heart pick up its pace? He found himself another step closer. He felt an urge to reach out, to touch Brown’s arm and turn him around, and he shoved his hands deep in his pockets so that he wouldn't.

It was ridiculous, really. Flambeau was everything one could want: handsome, debonair, wealthy, full to the brim of roguish charm. He'd been tangled up in satin sheets in practically every major city in Europe, with men and women almost as desirable as he was. Brown, on the other hand, looked like someone’s grandfather. He probably carried pear drops in his pocket for the village children. Kindness might be a desirable trait in a secondary school sweetheart, but it wasn't one that had ever inspired interest in Flambeau. He was impressed by genius, beauty, danger. Brown had no presence or panache; nothing to draw the eye, much less hold it.

So why couldn't Flambeau look away?

Father Brown poured his cocoa into a mug and set it down on an unused corner of the stovetop to cool. He turned back around. He couldn't fail to notice how close Flambeau was standing, but he didn't back away. 

“And are you never tempted?” Flambeau asked in a low voice. His heart leapt at his own impudence, but he had no intention of stepping away now. Brown was too tall for him to loom, but he leaned in, turning his head to the side so that he was whispering into the priest’s ear, and so that he couldn't meet the priest’s eye. “By all the beauty that you see?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brown nervously wet his lips. What he would do seemed obvious; he would push Flambeau back, with a look of profound disappointment and perhaps even a flash of temper. He would scold, and Flambeau would retort, and Flambeau would be able to depart satisfied for good. Let Brown be angry with him. Let him see that Flambeau was every inch the scoundrel he declared himself to be. Let Flambeau be free of his lofty ideas and unrelenting forgiveness forever, and he could let Brown go with them.

Instead, one hand came up and brushed the front of Flambeau’s jacket, almost too tentative to feel. Flambeau held his breath. In the kind of whisper reserved for cathedrals, awed and so aware that God was watching, Brown said, “I'm just a man.”

It broke over Flambeau like a wave, the quiet concession of temptation. Brown, a saint, _wanted_ him? Wanted _him_? It was impossible, for a hundred reasons. It couldn't true. Yet Brown had never lied. Brown would never lie.

Flambeau was not a patient man. It was a considerable failing, in his line of work, but one which he’d never managed to overcome. He chafed at stillness, and rebelled against caution. To take one’s time was to waste one’s time, and that he refused to do. But against all his instincts demanding movement, decisiveness, he could hardly make himself move, knowing that Father Brown was expecting--hoping--that he would.

With a hesitancy wholly unfamiliar to him, he pressed his lips chastely to Brown’s cheek. Then another kiss, to his temple, just above the indent where the arm of his glasses fit too tightly. Brown sighed against his neck, his head tipping minutely towards him. His hand still hovered between them, so Flambeau brought up his own, tracing his fingertips up the back of Brown’s until he could slot their fingers together and press their entwined hands against his chest.

When Flambeau leaned back to read his face, Brown’s eyes were closed. They fluttered open when Flambeau laid his hand along Brown’s jaw and stroked a thumb across his cheek, the day’s growth of stubble prickly against his skin. Brown’s half-lidded eyes rested on Flambeau’s mouth. His fingers twitched unconsciously against Flambeau’s lapel. 

Flambeau leaned in to kiss him.

For a moment that stretched into an eternity of tenderness and uncertainty, Flambeau didn't think. His heart sang, panic harmonizing with the same _rightness_ he usually encountered when cracking a safe. It was the easiest thing in the world.

He kissed like he was seventeen years old in Paris again, clumsy and terrified of making a mistake. The moment felt so fragile that it must shatter if he pressed too quickly, so he kissed lightly and with his eyes squeezed tight for fear of the dream disappearing when he opened them. But with every moment that passed, as Brown failed to vanish and Flambeau failed to be struck down for his audacity, he grew more certain. He shifted closer, slid his hand to the back of Brown’s neck to draw him in, kissed like it would grant him absolution. 

He pulled away, to catch his breath and to find a better angle. When he leaned in again, Brown’s hand against his chest stopped him.

“Wait,” Brown whispered, his eyes downcast. His voice sounded pained, and the music Flambeau had been listening to turned discordant.

“You've changed your mind.”

Fleetingly, foolishly, he thought he could persuade him to change it back. Brown had been celibate for years, at least, and Flambeau kept himself in practice. It couldn't be difficult to seduce a priest, not when the attraction was already there. He ought to just kiss him again, with less tenderness and more passion, and then…

Then what? He'd have convinced Brown to break his vows, in exchange for a single night of considerable, but not quite divine, ecstasy. Flambeau wouldn't delude either of them into thinking it would be more than that. It would take a miracle for him to settle down; Rebecca had known it, when she'd walked away. He wasn't the sort of man to stay in one place, and he wasn't the sort that anyone would want to. It was the excitement he offered that was appealing, the idea of a memory to treasure but not trouble that would linger past the dawn. Brown, on the other hand, wasn't the sort to be content with a memory.

He lowered his hands and stepped back. It would be better for them both if neither of them remembered this.

“I forgot myself, for a moment,” he said, into the heavy silence. Brown’s mouth opened to reply--perhaps to complete Flambeau’s mortification by apologizing--but Flambeau cut him off. “Let's not speak of it.”

Brown watched him ruefully. There might have been something else in his eyes, something like pity, but Flambeau refused to meet them to be sure. He'd been a fool to come here to begin with, and a bigger one to let so much of himself be revealed. The very last thing he needed was a priest who saw too much getting a look at his soul, so carefully walled away where it couldn't inconvenience him. Now he could only hope that Brown was willing to keep secrets even outside of the confessional.

He needed to be gone, before he could embarrass himself further. “I’ll be on my way.”

“This isn't what you came here for,” Brown said, as Flambeau needlessly straightened his clothing, trying to get his thoughts in order. At his sides, his hands clenched uselessly. “Is there...was there something else you wanted?”

Was he unwilling to have Flambeau gone? Flambeau didn't let himself think so. “Merely returning your umbrella,” he reminded him, waving a hand at it, lying on the table. “Now I'll just--”

He cut himself off abruptly as he recalled his arrival that night, the umbrella and the hat reunited on their peg by the front door. But there it was, an identical contraption of faded black canvas and worn bamboo. It couldn't be a new one; the point of it was as scuffed as one would expect of an umbrella that got periodically wedged into garden walls.

When Flambeau glanced back at him, Brown was biting his lip against a rather sheepish smile. “Oh. Yes. The police found it a few blocks from the museum. Inspector Sullivan brought it with him when he came yesterday to accuse me of aiding and abetting a known thief. Again.”

“Really, you were no help at all this time,” said Flambeau drily, examining the umbrella. Exactly the same, except…

“They knew it was mine,” Brown continued over Flambeau’s thoughts, “because it has my initials engraved on the handle. You see?” And there, indeed, were the letters JB, stylistically cut into the wood. Father Brown blinked innocently at him, but there was no concealing the knowing look in his eyes. “So I wondered, did I lend you two?”

And perhaps there was no more apt way to end an evening so full of unexpected twists, than for Flambeau to flee rather than admit to the three secondhand shops he'd visited in search of a perfect replica of the umbrella he'd thrown away. He was sure that he heard Father Brown chuckle as he hastily made an excuse and strode to the door. As he restored his hat and opened the door, he heard Brown call after him, “A bientôt, Flambeau.”

Despite himself, he smiled as he vanished into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri, and not "One Step Closer" by Lincoln Park
> 
> thanks to Madison for beta-ing. Colin, it's your turn to write a fic.


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